Letters to the Editor
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Rowling equal parts strange duck, huge chicken
Putting aside the legal and economic conundrums, is an author really the best person to be writing an encyclopedic sister text to their work? If Rowling wants to release books that add to her made-up universe, great. But, really, what's the big deal with a guy releasing what amounts to a companion book from a scholarly perspective which sorts out rather than adds to Rowling's text? If anything a little competition might get Rowling to release a more comprehensive encyclopedia rounding out the rough geographical and historical edges of Potterland. Or I suppose it'd at least get her to dole out even more tabloidesque details concerning the personal lives of her characters.
And is anyone else more incensed by how quickly Rowling allowed her work to be strip-mined for any possible marketing potential? Heaven forbid someone puts effort into a Harry Potter related product.
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you seem to have missed the point
your article talks about Google's rights on the web, well no one has ever objected to the hp lexicon's rights on the web!
In this case Warner Brothers are legally obliged to defend the rights they have acquired and WB therefore requested sight of the BOOK before it was published. WB have after all been happy with apparently some 40 odd books on the subject of Harry Potter but nevertheless they do need to SEE the book in order to give it the OK.
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False Analogy... Off-base... Lame
Mr. Manjoo,
You've got it all wrong here...
Your blog...while interesting enough...isn't in the same realm, genre or much of anything with the Rowling corpus. You don't care if Google or anyone makes an index of your columns since it's insignificant, no one would buy it and you don't care... It might even be a little puff to your ego if someone did it: "Hey look! Someone put a zillion hours into indexing MY work! What a nerd...Isn't it neat?" The odd bias of your perspective is readily apparent.
Rowling on the other hand isn't "wrong"... It's not a moral question... She's not even mistaken in her desire to maintain creative control over her story, characters etc. She has a legitimate interest in preserving the integrity of her work...and so do we. She seems to have struck a sensible, sane and humane balance where this is concerned, encouraging the imaginations of young fans and co-existing with the inevitable fandom, and making the best, even something good of it.
Fans go over the top by definition...
But sometimes fans go over the line as well, getting so wound-up in the object of their fascination that they violate the bounderies between what is theirs and what is not. Stalkers, thieving down-loaders, and opportunistic encyclopedists and indexers all have trouble distinguishing between their own egos and other people and their work.
The young man who thinks to make an unauthorized profit off of Ms. Rowling's creation is doing something unethical, immoral and probably illegal as well as extremely gauche and unaesthetic... Rowling's proposed encyclopedia has the possiblility of being a creative work, with new and interesting information; the fan's hack-work can only be derivative and at best second-rate.
Rowling may not be a JRR Tolkien, an Ursula Le Guin, a Madeline L'Engle or even a CS Lewis... But she's worked hard at her craft and there are artful glimmers through-out her books. I find her and her work admirable, though not yet worth a second read. I decided to get them in hardback and put them on the second shelf.
Bottom line, your analogy equating Machinist with Harry Potter is 1. False, 2. Off-base, and 3. Simply Lame. You get a C- for the thinking in this (and the previous) posting... Come on, you can do better.
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Do people understand why we have copyright?
I am very concerned over how much backlash this (and the last) post has received. Admittedly, the first post took a harsh tone toward Rowling, perhaps this irritated her fans, but I would expect fans more than anyone should understand the value of the HPL. For the most part, it doesn't seem like Rowling's defenders have given any thought to the intended role of copyright law.
I am not an avid Harry Potter fan, and I certainly have never looked up anything in the HPL, but it sounds like a useful reference for many, many fans. More importantly, I can't imagine that reading the HPL is in anyway comparable to reading a Harry Potter Book. The HPL is filled with facts, they aren't facts about the real world, they are facts about the Harry Potter books. For whatever reason, though, the facts contained in the HPL have influenced millions of real people's real lives. They have real world importance. I don't understand why so many readers are so eager to see these facts locked away under copyright.
Anyone who reads this blog knows how tumultuous this decade has been for copyright law. Digital media and the internet have resulted in scores of legal challenges. Many laws are in need of reform. To do this, the public needs to ask itself exactly what copyright is their to protect. According to the US Constitution, copyright is about ensuring an artist has the incentive to produce quality work. In other words, writers should be able to profit from their work. They do not need absolute control over their work (remember the recent post about crazy ol' Prince suing his fan site?)
If the HPL gets published, there's no way it's going to hurt Harry Potter book sales, but even if it did, so what? Copyright isn't about protecting a copyright holder's ability to make boatloads of money. It's about making sure writer's keep writing, and ensuring that public has access to this writing. Ironically, a court ruling against the HPL has exactly the opposite effect. It prevents people from having access to a printed copy of the book, and probably discourages future fans from producing high quality references guides, or other work inspired by copyrighted material.
Regardless of Farhad's questionable analogy between his blog and the Harry Potter series, the real issue is why we have copyright, and what people think it should accomplish.